“WASHINGTON (AP) — A campaign fundraising report shows Republican presidential dropout Mitt Romney lent himself $7 million last month. That means Romney spent more than $42 million of his personal fortune on his failed campaign,” writes Jim Kuhnhenn in an Associated Press transmission titled Romney Lent His Campaign $7M in January

The former venture capitalist and Massachusetts governor finished January with nearly $9 million in the bank. But more than $3 million of those funds must be returned to donors because they were earmarked for the general election […]

His campaign reported to the Federal Election Commission yesterday that he loaned his campaign $6.95 million during January to reach that total.

The former Massachusetts governor’s total self-financing puts him ahead of Steve Forbes, the publisher who spent $38 million on his unsuccessful run for the GOP nomination in 1996, but shy of the $63.5 million that H. Ross Perot spent on his 1992 third-party presidential campaign.

Romney’s total loan also equates to about $167,000 for each of the 253 delegates he won before suspending his campaign. By suspending his bid, Romney, who made an estimated $250 million as a venture capitalist, can keep raising money to possibly pay himself back.

Romney also reported raising $9.7 million last month, bringing his campaign total to $63.6 million.

That total is appreciably more than that raised by John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee whom Romney endorsed last week. McCain received contributions totaling about $49 million and borrowed nearly $4 million more by the end of last month.

During January, McCain raised $11.7 million and borrowed $950,000, his campaign reported to the FEC. After he emerged as the front-runner, he raised nearly twice as much in January than during the previous three months combined […]

Conclusion: Romney dominated the field with his own money and his fund raising prowess. Yet he still failed. More evidence of Romney’s preposterously low ROI for his every campaign dollar.

“Consider some recent sound bites,” requests Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe in an article titled What would Reagan say?

“You said we would fight for every job! You said that we would fight to get healthcare for all Americans! You said we’d fight to secure our border! You said we’d fight for us to be able to get lower taxes for middle-income Americans!”

“Guess what they’re doing in Washington: They’re worrying, because they realize, the lobbyists and the politicians realize, that America now understands that Washington is broken. And we’re going to do something about it.”

“Washington told us that they’d get us better healthcare and better education – but they haven’t. Washington told us they’d get us a tax break for the middle-income Americans – but they haven’t.”

You don’t have to be a political junkie to recognize those as specimens of populist Democratic boilerplate, right? The only challenge is to match each quotation to the Democratic candidate who said it.

Except that no Democrat uttered those words. The three big-government platitudes above were taken from Republican Mitt Romney’s Michigan primary victory speech on Tuesday.

No one is surprised when Dennis Kucinich or John Edwards insists that it’s the federal government’s responsibility to “get us better healthcare and better education.” Coming from Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the claim that the Bush tax cuts shortchanged middle-income Americans is all too familiar. But from a Republican like Romney, who casts himself as the truest, most Reaganesque conservative in the GOP field?

Romney’s message used to be one of unabashed small-government conservatism: “Government is simply too big. State government is too big. The federal government is too big. It’s spending too much.” Those words still appear on his website, but there was nothing like them in his remarks last week. He told his supporters that Washington is broken and needs to be fixed – which is decidedly not the same as saying it needs to be shrunk. Romney used to boast of the hundreds of spending line-items he vetoed as Massachusetts governor; “I like vetoes,” he told audiences. But these days he’s singing from a different hymnal […]

Yes. And about those lobbyists Romney broods about:

“Insisting that he is a Washington outsider, Mitt Romney has been captured on tape arguing with a reporter about whether a Washington lobbyist named Ron Kaufman runs or just advises his campaign for president,” writes Cliff Kincaid in a NewsWithViews.com article titled ROMNEY SURROUNDED BY PRO-U.N. LOBBYISTS

The more important issue is what Kaufman lobbies for. It turns out that Kaufman’s firm, as well as another Romney adviser, Vin Weber, have worked to put more American taxpayer dollars into the coffers of the corrupt United Nations and other international agencies.

Kaufman’s firm, Dutko Worldwide, represents and works directly with an organization chaired by Bill Clinton, the Global Fairness Initiative (GFI), whose board includes AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and is dedicated to promoting “a more equitable and sustainable world for all people” […]

[…] But that’s not all. Romney adviser and lobbyist Vin Weber, a former Congressman and member of the board of the Council on Foreign Relations, worked for an organization promoting a U.S. taxpayer financial bailout of the United Nations. This group, the so-called Emergency Coalition for Financial Support of the U.N, included the pro-world government World Federalist Association, National Council of Churches, Catholics for a Free Choice, Americans for Democratic Action, and the United Nations Association […]

… “Now, just seven weeks before the first votes are cast, Romney’s disciplined approach stands as one of the biggest contrasts with his main rivals for the Republican nomination, all of whom are campaigning more as charismatic figures than as methodical politicians seeking to lock up various constituencies,” writes the estimable and precise Michael Levenson of the Globe Staff in a boston.com release titled Methodical style sets Romney apart from GOP rivals

Backed by heavy spending, Romney’s game plan has propelled him into the lead in Iowa and New Hampshire polls and into the top tier of GOP contenders nationwide. But it has also drawn critics who say his persona is so carefully crafted it appears contrived and does not elicit the same kind of passionate support as his rivals, who showcase their personalities.

“The fear is that voters won’t know who this guy is,” said Daron Shaw, a University of Texas political scientist and a strategist for President Bush’s campaigns in 2000 and 2004 who is not involved in this campaign. “That’s kind of the concern with people who are on Romney’s side and looking for him to do well. He can have wonderful positions on the issues, but if voters don’t know him and don’t have a sense of him, they’re not going to trust the particulars of his healthcare plan. They’re not going to trust that he’s necessarily going to be tough on national security issues.”

Romney’s strategy has produced broad-based, but not deeply loyal, support. A Boston Globe poll published Sunday indicated that Romney was leading in New Hampshire by 12 percentage points over his nearest rival, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. It also suggests that Romney’s supporters are the least likely to have made up their minds, compared with backers of Giuliani and Senator John McCain of Arizona …

“I think he’s thought through where he thinks he can win, how he thinks he can win, and what he’s going to do about it,” he said. “Most of the other candidates don’t really have a clue” … etc.

Well, duh. Of course they don’t have a clue, Boy Weyrich.

What the abjectly prostrate Weyrich and his imperious master, Romney, fail to understand is that the primary process is a learning process—or at least it is supposed to be. It is—or it was—supposed to be about candidates testing and developing messages, and about constituencies and coalitions forming and un-forming in relation to their perceptions, to the media’s perceptions, to how the candidates respond to their appeals or address them in their proposals etc.

“CNN reports that Mitt Romney ‘has spent $10.2 million on television advertising this year, a record amount at this point in a presidential campaign, according to new data provided to CNN,'”writes Taegan Goddard of Teagan Goddard’s Political Wire in a post titled Romney’s Campaign Sets New Record for Early TV Advertising

“He is spending more than $85,000 a day — $600,000 last week alone — on campaign commercials, according to TNSMI/Campaign Media Analysis Group, CNN’s consultant on political television advertising spending. Romney’s presidential campaign commercials have aired more than 14,500 times. The closest Republican to Romney in ad spending is Arizona Sen. John McCain, who has aired more than $300,000 worth of campaign ads.”

Romney, in an attack on fellow candidate Rudy Giuliani, said Friday that his own real-world experience and socially conservative values represent the “Republican wing of the Republican Party.”

McCain, who is battling his better-financed competitors in New Hampshire, criticized Romney in a speech to state Republican Committee members. He said he would never “con” them in asking for their votes. McCain won the state’s GOP primary in 2000, routing then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush.

“As we all know, when he ran for office in Massachusetts, being a Republican wasn’t much of a priority. In fact, when he ran against Ted Kennedy, he said he didn’t want to return to the days of Reagan-Bush. I always was under the impression Ronald Reagan was a real Republican,” said McCain, who considers Reagan his political mentor.

“When Gov. Romney donated money to a Democratic candidate in New Hampshire, I don’t think he was speaking for Republicans. When he voted for a Democratic candidate for president, Paul Tsongas, I don’t think he was speaking for Republicans.”

Romney, during his failed Senate run against Kennedy, said he didn’t want to return to the 1980s. He also donated money to New Hampshire Democrat Dick Swett’s political campaign.